Reeper!

Thanks for reading SFR's arts blog. We're excited to announce that we've moved over to SFReeper.com! Come check us out!

Check out my interview with the wild and weird Shelley Hirsch on SFR's Web site, and then check out Hirsch herself Sunday night at the Santa Fe Complex.

It doesn't even matter

It doesn't even matter if the new Bond movie Quantum of Solace sucks. The theater, which I'll be in at 7:30 will be packed. If I weren't sick I'd be super excited for Bond and crappy nachos, but since I am I may just have to sneak some tea into the theater.

JCVD

There are no words. Just watch:

Castanets City of Refuge Review

Castanets
City of Refuge
Asthmatic Kitty Records

The easiest words to describe Castanet’s fourth studio album, City of Refuge, are “sparse” and “atmospheric.” These are both apt but only skim the surface of what Ray Raposa set out to do when he recorded the album alone in a Nevada hotel room.
City of Refuge is a dark, introspective album that allows Raposa to expose himself through narrative, delicate guitar picking and metaphor. It is an album where its songwriter truly does take refuge, returning to the theme not only in the album title but as a two-part song. “Refuge 1” finds Raposa mid crisis, announcing his intention to “run to the city of refuge.” Near the end of the album, after he’s explored himself emotionally and musically, he breaks out traditional blues chords for “Refuge 2,” adds an echo to his voice and begs the “city to take back the whiskey, cocaine and the heavens.” The running didn’t pay off the way he expected it to, but something beautiful and personal happened there.
Though the album traces a personal struggle, it’s not without its tender moments. As with any re-evaluation of the world, the mood is not consistent. The gospel song “I’ll Fly Away,” which has been recorded by everyone from Alison Krauss and Gillian Welch, Johnny Cash and Kanye West, is a moment of false redemption within the search. It’s the moment that Raposa thought he was looking for, and it’s followed by the instrumental and Calexico (without the horns)-esqe “Hum”—a song of travel from the city that leads nowhere but right back to the beginning. In fact, no matter how many times Raposa tries to escape into refuge, and refuge itself, he’s left with only himself. Despite the attempt to either repress the pain or reach catharsis, City of Refuge, like life itself, never fully lets go. And in that constant search lies one of the most introspective and beautiful albums of Raposa’s career.

Stalking America

Rob Paravonian loves him some America!



Now normally I don't find allusions to abusive relationships funny at all, but somehow Paravonian has managed to take the ideas of stalking and obession to a place where they're so over the top they actually work. "Whose your founding father bitch? She'd better say it's me."

Maybe what makes this so funny is that we're all so overprotective right now. Judging from the status updates on my friend's Facebook pages if McCain wins everyone I know, with the exception of the one soul brave enough to admit pride in his Republican vote, will have a complete and utter breakdown.

Maybe we are a little too obsessed with this election. So no more. Ignore it until tonight. Don't spend the day fretting about something that's out of your hands now, unless you haven't voted yet--in that case GET OFF THE INTERNET AND GO GET IN LINE.

Books litter my office. They're on shelves above my desk, stacked in stolen postal service boxes under the table and overflowing from the tops of filing cabinets. Many of these books aren't of the kind I want to read but every once in awhile my snobbish intellectual side is treated to a Nobel Prize winner or a new translation of an old classic.

Today, that surprise waiting in my mailbox was a new translation of Kafka's Amerika: The Missing Person. I've got an old, beat up illustrated copy that I worked my way through years ago but, as is often the case with unfinished novels, there was something off about it. The new translation is based on a slightly different text than the version I read, and I'm looking forward to diving into this new edition to discover further the strange worlds that Kafka created, and which influenced so many of my favorite writers from around the world.

Droppin' Dollars

In his beautifully written treatise on heroin, Junky, William Burroughs said, "Junkies have no interest in sex and they have no interest in other people except as suppliers of junk. They go around looking younger for a few days. Then they need more."



After throwing down a cool c-note yesterday on nine beautiful new pieces of vinyl I understand that sentiment. Buying music on records is, to me, like buying a painting. Except that at $10-$20 a pop I can afford to bring home several new pieces. Since I've been deep into this drone-y post rock thing as of late I cleaned the Candyman out of A Silver Mount Zion and Godspeed You! Black Emperor. It wasn't a direct response to my blog of a week ago in which I quoted an article about how women don't buy records by those types of bands, but it certainly didn't hurt to go against the notion.


I also hooked it up with The Raveonettes' Lust Lust Lust, an album I've had on my computer for some time and finally wanted to blast through the house. The duo sounds like The Jesus and Mary Chain would have if they'd been around when a '57 Chevy was new. I already knew the album, but when my friend behind the counter saw it and exclaimed, "YES!" I knew it would sound even better.

Also purchased was the new Castanets, City of Refuge--which I reviewed for this upcoming Wednesday and am madly in love with--an album by Jana Hunter--who helped Castanets but is amazing in her own right and something I've been meaning to pick up for awhile--Xiu Xiu's Fabulous Muscles and Explosions in the Sky's The Earth is Not a Cold Dead Place.

Burroughs is right. As soon as I left I didn't care about talking to my friend any longer. I simply wanted to sit in my room on the floor and listen to all of these albums. Hours worth of music, most of which I already know and love, but wanted to explore more deeply.

The idea of vinyl is silly to some. It's big, it's bulky and it's antiquated. But it sounds so nice and rich. MP3s really just don't cut it for the true music snob, such as myself. A few weeks ago I interviewed the band Pillars and Tongues who shared with me a great story of bassist Evan Hydzik picking up a copy of a Brian Eno album that he had on CD and his dad's old copy of vinyl. Hydzik threw them both across the room. The CD shattered, the record slid to a stop and Hydzik and fellow band member Mark Trecka put it on and listened to it. It's beautiful that a 20 something year old piece of plastic held up. Sure, records shatter and scratch, but they degrade so much more slowly and really are more sturdy. When the sound on a record atrophies it adds to the music, as it does on cassette tape, but on CD a scratch can be fatal. MP3s are given this weird benefit of the doubt that they'll last, but there's nothing to hold onto there. Album art in a program that no one looks at, the loss of liner notes, and if your hard drive goes down...goodbye music. Sure, it's easier to collect hundreds of files, which I certainly have, but it's not the same to scroll through a list as it is to sit uncomfortably on the floor and figure out what to listen to through a more tangible experience.

More Zombies

Halloween Tunes

Looking for some great music for Halloween? (I personally need a good soundtrack while putting on my costume).
Check out the latest from the ever-awesome DJ Rocque Ranaldi: a It's The Great Funkin' Charlie Brown!. For those of you, like me, who were sad when Indie went off the air (mostly because I've long loved listening to Rocque on the radio), you can still hear him and other programming on the Web at indiesf.com. And you can download the podcasts.

Shape Shifter

Sad news for New Mexico book lovers as yesterday mystery writer Tony Hillerman passed away in Albuquerque. The 83-year-old author was loved in the Southwest, an area he dedicated both his fictional imagination and his non-fiction voice on. The author of dozens of books will be missed.

Know When to Hold 'em, Know When to Fold 'em.

Hopefully Paper Toy'z will make a little paper Palin with lots and lots of paper clothes in the next few days. But in the meantime, when you're bored at work and looking to waste company paper and glue, build your own Obama. The site offers up a new design nearly every day and sometimes more than one. Sweet!

Men, Women and Music

This morning in my inbox was a link from the Times Online about the differences between men's and women's musical lists. I was thinking about this just last night, as I attended a show at Albuquerque's The Stove (which needs to update its Web site. Hint, hint) by Santa Fe band The Late Severa Wires and Sunburned Hand of the Man (Sunburned plays tonight in Santa Fe at The Process, by the way 8 pm, no cover, 367 Hillside Ave.). The audience for these two psychedelic, post rock noise bands was, by far, primarily male. The members of each band was also a majority male, though Sunburned did have a female singer/sampler/electronic knob turner.

As I listened to the music I couldn't find much in the way of an answer as to why men and women listen to different music. Most of the stuff last night was more atmospheric than wordy and the angst that I felt coming from both bands seems to be a pretty common type of feeling. It's angry without being violent, dramatic without being tearful and calmly meditative despite the feedback and pounding drums. Basic, primal emotions, yet the men were by far more into it than the women.

And though the Times article points out that "you seldom see many women buying albums or attending gigs by instrumental “postrock” acts such as Tortoise or Godspeed You! Black Emperor" it's lists of "artists that women love and men hate" and "artists that men love and women hate" stick pretty squarely to the pop side of things. For the ladies it's James Blunt (wait, someone out there actually does like this? Um. Ugh.), Cat Stevens, Tori Amos and Early Genesis, while the boys get The Smiths, Led Zeppelin and Neil Young. I'd love to complain about the lists being unfair in some way but I think they're not too bad. Pop crap coupled with more pop crap, angst on both sides, etc. Two bands from each list for this girl, and a lot of shock that anyone digs the rest.

What I find most interesting about this idea though is not the idea that men and women listen to music differently, it's something that I discussed with a friend the other day. The way female creativity is accepted. (I would have loved to see where the writer felt that Sonic Youth fit on the list, a very "male" group with one of the most interesting women in rock on guitar.) Many male friends of mine who don't let their creativity out much but are of the "creative type" stereotype are automatically assumed to be creative and good at what they do. They say they write or play guitar and it's accepted, even if no one has seen the artwork. Women have to prove their skills in a different way, and even then what is seen is taken at face value and not expanded upon within the imagination. Why can a man paint and play guitar while a woman who does photography shocks everyone when she sings? Then there's the whole issue of dating. When we women date creative men our own creativity, no matter how successful we are, is outshone by the men in our lives, no matter how unsuccessful. The real issue isn't how do we process art differently, but how are we processed by art. Perhaps that's why women gravitate toward easy to digest music by men while sticking with complexity in their female musicians. We understand that complexity in ourselves, yet we deal with it so much in men we want our men simple, the way they're not in real life.

Rock Out with Your Barack Out

Earlier in the week SFR reported that due to permit issues Rock for Barack may not happen. Rest assured young (and not so young) voters, the show indeed goes on. The Santa Fe Brewing Pub & Grill (27 Fire Place, 424-9637) quality control and music promotions staffer Jeff Williams confirmed this morning by e-mail that “it’s a go!”
The show takes over the Brew. Pub from 11 am-10 pm with a lineup that includes local rock band Kiss the Villain, Cuban street music performers Savor, R&B virtuoso Paul Rivers Bailey and others as well as touring funksters US Pipe (disclosure: US Pipe is lead by my very own big brother) and Jordinian oud player and percussionist Hani Naser.

Rock for Barack 11 am-10 pm Saturday, Oct. 18 $10-$15 Santa Fe Brewing Pub & Grill 27 Fire Place 505-424-9637

Ride for Dear Life

Or at least for your health. Santa Fe's own Critical Mass meets tomorrow, Thursday Oct. 16 at 5:25 at the Plaza for a mass ride.

Sweet.

Best Week for Books!

Just a few days ago a former New Mexico resident, Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio, won himself the Nobel Prize in literature. This week the National Book Award finalists have just been announced and former Santa Fean and St. John's College student Salvatore Scibona has been nominated for his novel The End. Scibona was in Santa Fe just a few weeks ago to read from the book at his alma mater. According to his Web site Scibona began the book about 10 years ago in New Mexico, though the story is set in the 1950s in Ohio.

Scibona is in good company with Aleksandar Hemon, The Lazarus Project, Rachel Kushner, Telex from Cuba, Peter Matthiessen, Shadow Country and Marilynne Robinson, Home as his fellow finalists. The awards will be announced Nov. 19 in New York City.


Image of Scibona by Carlos Ferguson


Update: Unfortunately Scibona lost out to Matthiessen in the awards, but lets still congratulate our Johnnie and former New Mexican on his big nomination!

Obama Gets Into the Game

This little tidbit from the Washington Post brings yet another interesting political advertising strategy to the forefront. The Obama campaign has purchased a billboard in the virtual Paradise City of racing game "Burnout Paradise." Apparently advertising isn't new to this game, which features so many billboards and product placements that it mirrors real life (unlike what I remember from the few times I played one of the "Grand Theft Auto" games where the ads are all for fictional products.

It makes sense for the candidates to go into realms of entertainment other than television, but it also kind of kills the escapist point of that entertainment. Don't most players want to race around on a virtual motorcycle or in a digital sports car to get away from things like the economy, politics and other stresses? On the one hand I'm impressed with the Obama campaign for jumping into the virtual world in order to reach young people, who, for the first time I can remember, actually care about the election, but on the other, I'm not sure branding our leisure time isn't at least partly to blame for some of the economic issues we're facing.

Zane's World

Zane Fischer, SFR's web editor, columnist and art critic, is profiled today by The Association of Alternative Newsweeklies, in its How I Got That Storyseries. AAN is profiling first-place winners from its annual contest. Zane won first place for column writing in our circulation category (under 50,000). SFR won a total of seven awards in the competition, including awards in arts criticism for Emiliano Garcia Sarnoff, editorial layout for Larry Kohr, honorable mention for our now-defunct Bill Richardson blog, and several awards for Angela Moore in cover design and illustration.

Albuquerque Ties

Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio, this year's Nobel Prize winner for literature, has ties to Albuquerque. Sweet!

Mark Your Calendars!!!